Success of the 18th PSCE Conference in Brussels

On 23 and 24 May 2018, another PSCE conference successfully took place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Brussels.

This 18Th edition marked the 10th year anniversary of the forum and was the perfect occasion for PSCE to engage in new and promising partnerships. An official agreement was signed with the 5G Infrastructure Association (5GIA) with the objective of taking better account PPDR needs for future 5G developments. In addition, the second Annual International Public Safety Broadband Leaders Forum on 24 and 25 of May which succeeded to PSCE Conference also illustrated the continuation of a fruitful cooperation between PSCE and FirstNET.

At the Brussels conference were addressed some of the hottest topics in public safety communications including the Use of Satellite for Critical Situations, Data Management in PPDR, Future First-Responders, Future Control rooms and 5G for PPDR. The conference was further enriched by presentations from public safety experts from Australia and South-Korea and marked by a significant involvement of the European Commission (DG HOME/DG CONNECT). In the course of dedicated sessions, the three PSCE committees (Research/Industry/End-users) gathered to discuss current topics and future opportunities within their respective field of expertise. On a related note, we are happy to announce that Monika Büscher (Lancaster University) has taken up the role of chair of the Research Committee, succeeding to Andrea Nowak (AIT).

In addition to the outstanding presentations given by the key-note speakers, the conference provided an excellent platform to share information and to exchange points of view in the field of public safety communications. It also featured a dedicated area where projects and initiatives could show their work and achievements to a relevant pool of public safety experts. The H2020 E2mC project as well as the IsItEthical? Initiatives were presented in an interactive way to conference participants. Overall the event brought together around 70 participants including public safety practitioners, policymakers, academic researchers, industrial experts and other interested stakeholders.

All conference documents have been made available to conference participants and to PSCE Institutional Members who have opportunity to download all presentations any time from the restricted part of the PSCE website.

The conference report as well as an overview video will be made available shortly.

The next PSCE conference will be held on 4-6 December 2018 in Bled, Slovenia.